


Two Halves and a Whole

by wilddragonflying



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 3-way relationship, F/M, Immortality, Multi, basically an excuse for me to go nuts writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilddragonflying/pseuds/wilddragonflying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every soul had one mate.</p><p>But what happens when your soul is in an immortal body, and your mate's is split between the Winchesters?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Halves and a Whole

**Author's Note:**

> So this is basically just an excuse for me to go nuts writing and playing around with the Supernatural world. Obviously I don't expect people to really like this; this is my first time writing a 3-way relationship, and I've paired the Winchesters with my own original character, so that's probably not going to go down well. Still, if you enjoyed it, let me know!
> 
> I don't own the Supernatural world, btw. If I did, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction about it!

(Contains spoilers up to 8x18)

_Finally,_ Erin sighed to herself as she walked out of the back door of The Dragon’s Hoard, the local bookstore in Missoula, Montana. The day had dragged on, seemingly forever, and she’d received several odd looks from long-time customers. It would be time for her to be moving on soon.

Erin walked through the alley, lost in her thoughts. She didn’t want to leave this town; she liked Missoula. Liked Montana. But she couldn’t stay in Montana; it would be just her luck—with the way her luck’s been going lately—to run into someone she knew from Missoula several years down the road and have to explain to them—

“Oof!” she grunted as something slammed into her from the side. Felt like a person, but before Erin could do anything about it, the person was grabbing her wrist.

“Run, run, run!” he—definitely male, and he was damned lucky Erin was still recovering from the shock of his impact—shouted as he grabbed her arm and started dragging her down the street with him. He didn’t stop until they were several blocks down, and then he finally slowed and came to a stop next to what looked like a ’67 Chevrolet Impala. Something about this car tickled at the back of Erin’s mind, but she didn’t bother trying to figure out what it was as she whirled, yanking her arm out of the man’s grasp.

“What the _hell_?” she snarled, her hands clenching into fists, and she had to fight to keep herself under control, keep herself in control.

“Dean, what did you—who is she?” Holy fucking hell, the guy getting out of the passenger side of the Impala had to be at least 6’3”. Probably taller. He had lighter brown hair that was slightly longer than she was used to seeing on a guy, but he managed to carry it off pretty well. He had some sort of brown—leather, maybe?—jacket on, and was wearing jeans and boots. His hazel eyes looked startled, and were looking her over warily.

Something about him reminded her of Erik. _No,_ she told herself firmly. _Don’t go there._ “’She’ is Erin Sanchez,” she spat. “Question is, who the hell are you two?”

The man who’d kidnapped her—he was wearing a leather jacket, his hair was cut pretty close to his head and was slightly spiky; he looked older than the other man, but he was easily three or four inches shorter—glanced at the other man before replying, “I’m Dean Winchester, this is my brother Sam. And before you ask, I had a vampire on my ass, that’s why I hauled you with me; didn’t want you to get in the line of fire.”

“Didn’t want me—?” Erin stilled suddenly. Oh, Jesus Christ, this was just her luck. “Please tell me you didn’t just say the words ‘Dean Winchester,’ ‘Sam,’ and ‘vampire,’” she said, her voice low. Dean looked at her quizzically.

“Yeah, I did. Do we know you?”

“No! Oh, Jesus, I need to—I gotta—“ Erin decided she was just wasting time floundering for words and instead turned and fled down the alley, heading instinctively for her apartment. Screw waiting for giving her two weeks’ notice; she was leaving town tonight. If the Winchesters were in town, that wasn’t a good sign. Dean had mentioned a vampire, but that didn’t mean that—

No.

Now wasn’t the time to think about it. Now was the time to get the hell out of Dodge.

***  
Dean glanced over at Sam. “What the hell was that?” he asked, bewildered.

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before, but she acted like she expected you to shoot her with salt, or maybe spray her with holy water,” he replied, sounding—and looking—just as confused as Dean felt. Which couldn’t mean anything good. Dean was quiet for a few moments, lost in thought. Who the hell was this “Erin Sanchez”? He jumped when Sam said, “But, I feel like maybe I should know her.”

Dean didn’t say anything. “Yeah,” he finally said. Then he gave himself a shake. “C’mon, we got a vamp to go decapitate.”

Sam followed him back into the Impala, but Dean could almost hear the gears in Sam’s mind whirring, and he wasn’t too surprised when Sam pulled his laptop out and began clicking around.

Leaving him to it, Dean tried to focus himself back on the hunt, but he couldn’t forget a pair of grey eyes snapping with diamond fire behind a pair of silver glasses.

 

Later that night, Dean was looking over his brother’s shoulder, absently staring at a picture of a blonde with short hair, glasses, and grey eyes whose height was listed as 5’6” as Sam hacked his way through a police report. “Aha!” Sam finally exclaimed triumphantly. “Erin Sanchez. Showed up in town with—Good God. How the fuck is she still alive?” His voice trailed off, and Dean felt his limbs go cold as he read the extent of the damage done to her body. She’d never named an assailant, claimed to have blacked out, but Dean knew that she had to have been fighting like hell. You didn’t just get almost every bone in your body broken without struggling at least a little bit.

Dean made a startled noise as he spotted a picture of Erin’s hip. There was a tattoo there, something Dean felt he should recognize. He didn’t realize he’d spoken the thought aloud until Sam replied. “Yeah, I feel the same. I don’t… I don’t know where I would have seen a symbol like that, though.” Sam quickly did some more digging, but let out a frustrated huff. “I’m gonna need to dig deeper.”

“Later,” Dean said decisively, moving to grab his jacket and gun. “For now, let’s go see this Erin and see what she’s hiding.”

Sam looked over at him in surprise, and Dean raised an eyebrow. “What? You don’t survive a beating like that without some sort of supernatural assistance.”

“And you think she’s going to tell _us_?” Sam scoffed, but he grabbed his jacket and followed Dean out to the car. He’d gotten Erin’s address from the police report, and gave Dean directions as they drove.

***

Erin sighed and pushed a hand through her hair as she shut the door to her former apartment behind her. With any luck, the landlord would make his usual weekly inspection and find her note along with this month’s rent tomorrow.

She was halfway down the sidewalk when she heard a car coming up behind her and slowing. Tensing instinctively, she half-turned her head, and then debated running. Gritting her teeth and setting her jaw, though, Erin realized the Winchesters weren’t the kind to give up easily, and she’d been stupid enough to _talk_ to them, to give the bond a little bit of a claw in each of them.

Instead, she led the way through downtown until she was standing in the parking lot of a seedy motel. There she waited, tapping her foot impatiently, while the Impala parked and both Winchester brothers got out of the car.

“What?” she demanded shortly, her tone and posture making it clear that she didn’t want this conversation.

“How are you alive?” Erin rolled her eyes. Of course Dean would be the one to get to the heart of that particularly problem.

“I’m breathing, asshole,” she shot back.

“You know what I mean,” he said firmly, not giving any ground as he and Sam came to a stop not three feet from her, and now Erin really had to repress the flight-or-fight adrenaline thundering through her system.

“No, I really don’t,” Erin insisted calmly, forcing her body to still. “I don’t even know you two, how the hell can I know what you’re talking about?”

Now the taller one—Sam—spoke up. “You do know us. You looked horrified when you realized what our names were. You know us,” he repeated, taking a tentative step closer.

Erin’s jaw clenched, and she forced herself to relax enough to snarl, “Who the hell in the supernatural world hasn’t heard of the Winchesters?” Their name was as good as legend, the brothers who’d killed Azazael, rounded up his demons, gone to Hell and back, stopped the Apocalypse, were the vessels for Michael and Lucifer, defeated the Leviathans, went to Purgatory, and were now fighting to close the gates of Hell forever. Their reputation inspired fear and a bit of awe in every supernatural creature, and awe and a bit of fear in every hunter. They were the closest thing to an unstoppable force short of God.

“So it was supernatural, whatever helped you survive that fight?” Dean asked, pouncing on her almost-admission. Erin growled under her breath.

“Yes,” she snapped. That much was true, at least, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

“What was it?” Dean pressed, and this time Erin growled, low and deep in the back of her throat, and not entirely human. It was enough to cause a flicker of uncertainty to light Dean’s eyes, and Erin forced herself to stop. She wasn’t looking for trouble.

“What’s got you so concerned with me?” she asked, slowly making herself relax, make her muscles unclench.

“You acted like you knew us,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound so certain now.

“Knew of you,” Erin corrected. “That doesn’t explain why you’d hunt me down; according to Dean, you were already busy with a vampire.”

“So you know about vampires?” Dean asked, and his eyes were hard, assessing again.

Erin barked out a laugh. “Sugar, there ain’t much I don’t know about the supernatural,” she bit out, her voice a bit bitter. “Still doesn’t explain what you boys are doing here.”

“We came to see if you’d like to come with us.” It was clear that Sam hadn’t expected himself to offer, and neither had Dean, if the looks on their faces are anything to go by.

Erin snorted. “Uh huh. Invite the woman you know nothing about to join you in whatever hare-brained scheme you’ve got going through your mind. Because there’s no way that can go wrong,” she says sarcastically.

“Woman?” Dean guffaws, a bit incredulous, and Erin’s really tempted to slap him. Or maybe punch him. “Honey, you can’t be more than 18.”

“If you read the police report, you’d know it says 21,” she snapped. “And looks are deceiving, _Winchester_ ,” she added, her voice curling into a vicious snarl. “You should have been dealing with enough supernatural creatures to know that by now.”

Sam stepped in between them, raising his hands. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said, looking back and forth between them. “Easy.”

“Like hell,” Dean snarled. “What are you, Erin?”

“Oh-ho,” Erin sneered. “It’s ‘what’ now, is it?” Her hands curled into fists at her side, and she was barely keeping herself from shoving Sam out of the way and lunging for Dean. _But,_ she reminded herself, _that’s not gonna help anything. You just need to get out of town._ “Look,” she said through gritted teeth, “I’m not looking for trouble. I just want to leave town, and then never see you two again.”

“Why?” Sam asked, turning to look at her, his eyes slightly wider than they should be. “We haven’t done anything to you.”

 _Yet._ Dean interrupted before Erin could reply. “Yeah, if you’re not a supernatural creature, why are you so afraid of us?”

Erin stared at Dean, wondering if he really was that stupid. “Um, hello? Did you miss the whole part about you being the _Winchesters_? You’re dangerous, and I don’t need any more danger, fuck you very much.”

A thunderous look rolled across Dean’s face, and Sam hastily stepped back in front of them. “Hey, no need to get hostile. Why don’t you need any more danger, Erin? Surely it’d be safer to have someone watching your back?”

Erin shifted the majority of her attention to the younger Winchester, but she still kept half an eye on Dean. “Because. And it might be safer for me, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be safer for you.”

“We’re Winchesters; I’m pretty sure we can handle whatever is coming after you,” Sam said.

Erin eyed him dubiously. “Maybe,” she conceded after several moments of silence. “But I’m not taking that risk; I won’t go through that again.” She turned and jogged off, ignoring Sam and Dean’s startled expressions, and Sam’s shout for her to wait. She managed to make it to a side street, pick a car, and hotwire it before they could catch up to her.

Erin didn’t stop driving all night.

***

Dean and Sam tried to follow, but Erin was fast, and she knew the city infinitely better than them. Eventually they gave up the chase, and returned to their motel room. Dean threw his stuff down on Sam’s bed before throwing himself on his own with a groan. “Well. That went well,” he said, his eyes closed and rubbing his face with his hands.

“Yeah, because there was no way it would ever end any other way but that,” Sam said sarcastically, tossing his own bag on his bed and flopping down beside Dean. “Shut it, man, too damn tired to move our shit,” he muttered when Dean shoved at him.

“Then you can go sleep in the Impala, or the floor,” Dean countered, shoving harder. Sam just rolled over on top of him, squishing a squawk from Dean before they began wrestling half-heartedly. Dean lost, but only because he was tired and Sam had a good bit of height on him.

“I win, so _you_ get to sleep on the floor,” Sam crowed, gleefully shoving Dean off of the bed. Dean landed with a thump and cursed under his breath, but just groped around on top of the bed until Sam handed him a pillow. Dean tucked it under his head, not bothering to think about all the nasty germs and god knew what else on the floor of the motel.

He was out before Sam turned off the lights.

 

Dean knew that they were headed _somewhere_ , he just didn’t know where. After they’d finished up the job in Missoula, they’d just started driving. Every town they stopped in, where they’d heard or read about potential cases, revealed itself to be recovering from a supernatural visit, but the creature or creatures were already dead. At first Dean chalked it up to coincidence, but the longer it went on, the more suspicious he got. Finally, he took a chance and bypassed the town that he and Sam had been planning to stop in. In response to Sam’s yelped, “What do you think you’re doing?”, Dean had just muttered something about having a hunch. It had been enough to shut Sam up, and Dean concentrated on driving, trying to figure out where the little tugging in his gut was trying to lead him.

Soon enough, he was pulling into a small town in Virginia, some place named Staunton. He managed to get a room in a motel in the downtown area despite it being almost six in the evening. He scowled at the clerk’s expression. “What?”

“Your accent… Obviously you ain’t a Northerner. Southerner, then. Where you from?”

“The hell’s that got to do with anything?” Dean snarled, crossing his arms over his chest. He was tired, cranky, and confused, wondering why he’d felt the need to stop in Staunton.

“Just wondering. In the Civil War, they used to determine spies that way. If you pronounced it ‘Stawnton’ you were a Unionist spy. If you said ‘Stanton’ you were a Confederate.” The guy passed over the room keys and Dean grumbled something unintelligible before returning to the car and tossing one of the keys to Sam.

“Here. C’mon, let’s dump our crap and drive around, see if we can find out anything.” Sam rolled his eyes.

“Dean, there’s no job here, nothing supernatural whatsoever. So why did we come here?” He watched Dean, curiosity shining in his eyes, and Dean shifted uncomfortably as he unlocked the door.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Just… Well, I think it might have something to do with Erin.” He hadn’t brought her up—neither had Sam—since Missoula, and he could tell that he’d thrown Sam with his mentioning her now.

Sam thought about it for a moment. “It might. You said something about having a hunch; a feeling to travel here, right?”

Dean looked at Sam in surprise. “You feelin’ it, too?” he asked after a moment, chucking his stuff in the room before heading back out to the Impala and sliding beside the driver’s seat.

“Have since Missoula,” Sam answered, buckling up. “Didn’t know if you had or not, though.”

“Hm,” Dean hummed noncommittally, putting the Impala in gear and pulling out of the parking lot, driving around downtown Staunton for a few minutes—could it get any smaller? Fifteen minutes of driving had shown them everything in the downtown area—before heading out West Beverly Street, heading toward Westview. Westview wasn’t much to see, either; just a little stretch of road with a couple of houses on either side, and a little church. Dean kept driving, Sam quiet in the shotgun seat. He had to repress the urge to speed; he felt like whatever it was that he and Sam had been chasing for the past several weeks was finally within reach, and the roads were so damned twisty anyway that he’d never be able to really get to the speed he wanted.

After another ten or fifteen minutes of driving, Dean came to a convenience store, Junction Convenience. He pulled over and topped off the gas tank, and when he was done he glanced around. He spotted floodlights across a field, and guessed it was a high school. He ducked back behind the wheel and turned the engine over. “Feel like going to a football game?” he asked Sam, grinning slightly.

Sam looked at him in surprise. “Sure. Just as friends, though, right?” he asked, punching Dean playfully on the shoulder. Dean laughed and ruffled his hair. It had been a while since he and Sam had just done some random shit together that didn’t immediately involve hunting.

“Sammy, I’m wounded,” Dean pouted, but he pulled across the intersection in front of Junction, heading up Buffalo Gap Highway to what the sign out front proclaimed “Buffalo Gap High School.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Betcha anything their mascot’s a buffalo,” he told Sam.

“Bison, actually,” Sam corrected, spotting a decal on the back of one of the vans. Dean had a hard time finding a parking spot, but once he did it was almost seven o’ clock, and they hurried to follow the crowd around the school to the back, where Dean could already hear the roar of the crowd.

“Place is packed,” he commented as he paid for his entry fee and waited for Sam to do the same.

“Sure is,” Sam agreed. He pocketed his ticket and scanned the crowd. “Wonder who they’re playing?” he asked, leading the way around various groups of high schoolers—narrowly avoiding being run over by a girl who was running, squealing, for another group of girls who immediately emitted squeals of their own—and past parents chatting and to a secluded spot where they could survey the whole field and crowd.

Dean gestured across the field, where a banner was set up saying, “Riverheads Gladiators.” “Guess them,” he said, eyes scanning their surroundings. Several girls were gathered a little ways away, whispering behind their hands and shooting glances over at Dean and Sam. Dean winked at one, promptly setting them off into a fit of giggles, but yelped when Sam smacked him in the back of the head. “What?” he demanded.

“Dude, they’re so jailbait. You’re not here to get laid,” Sam said, rolling his eyes right as the home team came pouring from what Sam guessed was the locker room as the announcer began announcing.

Dean didn’t pay any attention to the first three quarters of the game, at least until his stomach began complaining loudly that he hadn’t eaten anything since noon, and it was now past nine. “Hey, I’m gonna get some grub; want anything?” he asked Sam, needing to lean in to be heard over the roar of the crowd as someone—from the volume, Dean guessed the Bison—scored a touchdown.

“Nah,” Sam said, leaning against the railing, still raking the crowd with his gaze and mentally sorting the mass into recognizable groups.

“All right,” Dean said, picking and weaving a path between the gathered people—why the hell were there still so many people here?—to the concession stand. It was only after he had his burger and cheese fries that he felt that tugging in his gut again. Holding his food out of harm’s way, he followed it back to where Sam was standing. Dean deposited his food on the railing. “I’ll be right back, gotta check something out,” he said absently as he continued past Sam, who looked at him curiously. He waved Sam off when he made a move to follow, and continued walking, heading down the steps and around to what looked like the tennis courts.

***

Erin didn’t know why she’d come here. She’d spent some time in Staunton before, and it was a nice town. Quiet, unassuming, and for some reason it never seemed to attract supernatural attention. Well, not supernatural attention of the people-devouring kind. She didn’t count; she hadn’t killed anyone in years. And that last one had been in self-defense.

She was sitting on the far end of the tennis courts, having easily scaled the fence surrounding them, her knees drawn up to her chest and her chin resting on her knees. It was relatively easy to block out the roar of the crowd, and Erin shivered slightly in the cold. She hadn’t thought to bring a jacket. But she’d be fine.

As long as the Winchesters didn’t catch up with her. A frown creased Erin’s face as she thought about the Winchesters. They were enigmas, the two psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent brothers. She had actively been trying to avoid them before Missoula, and afterwards, she’d dropped herself completely off any sort of radar.

Or so she’d thought. The past few weeks, she’d felt a tugging, not quite from her gut, trying to pull her back the way she’d come. She had a suspicion about it, but she was hoping and praying that she was wrong, that it wasn’t what she thought it was. She’d encountered it before, with Erik, and…

And look how that’d turned out.

A rustling and soft metallic clicking interrupted her thoughts, and Erin looked up, pushing herself back into the shadows as she watched someone pick the lock on the gate and step onto the courts. She could feel the tugging in her gut growing more intense the further her heart sank. Of course. Standing up, Erin forced herself to keep her hands by her side even as they clenched into fists. “Dean,” she said coolly.

She could see that she’d startled him, if the way he jumped was any indication. “Jesus!” he exploded, turning to scan the shadows. Erin obligingly stepped out, her head raised.

“What are you doing here, Winchester?” she said, her tone no warmer than before. “No supernatural news here.”

“Following a hunch,” he answered, staring at her like she was some sort of ghost. “I see I was right,” he said finally.

Erin raised one eyebrow. “You were right,” she repeated. “About what?”

“That the tugging sensation was pulling me and Sam to you.”

Erin felt every part of her pause. “You _and_ Sam?” she repeated, not sure she’d heard right. “So Sam felt this… tugging, too?” Dean nodded, taking a step forward but immediately retreating when she bared her teeth and stiffened. “Well. That’s… not entirely unexpected. I’ve had my suspicions about you two, as well. But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want anything to do with either of you,” she added.

“Suspicions? And why don’t you want to have anything to do with us? Any other person in any kind of supernatural trouble would be glad to have us,” Dean said, crossing his arms over his chest and gazing at her steadfastly.

Erin snorted. “My kind of ‘supernatural trouble’ stems entirely from myself,” she pointed out. “Why are you two following me?”

“We don’t know,” Dean replied. He was frowning, and that only made the shadows deepen on his face, increasing his appeal. Erin shook her head.

“I’m assuming Sam’s here, too?” she asked after a moment, glancing around. She could hear the sounds of the crowd getting more nervous and riled up as the last quarter started drawing to a close, and she had to resist the urge to tilt her head and try to dial in her hearing to hear Sam.

“Yeah. Left him with my food,” Dean answered. “Come on; he wants to talk to you. Where you staying?”

Erin hesitated before following Dean out of the tennis courts. “Nowhere, really. I hotwired a car a few towns back, planned on sleeping there tonight.” She easily sidestepped around some squealing kids.

“Yeah, like we’re gonna let that happen,” she heard Dean mutter, but she didn’t comment on it; figuring that he hadn’t wanted her to hear that. Erin sighed to herself; this was _exactly_ what she hadn’t wanted happening. She kept quiet until they were approaching Sam, and then she tucked her hands into her pockets as Dean spoke up. “Sam, guess who I found?”

Sam turned around, a surprised look affixing itself to his face as he spotted Erin. “Erin!” he said, not moving. Dean snagged his burger—Sam had eaten the fries, apparently—and unwrapped it, taking a hearty bite.

Erin forced a smile to her face. “Hey, Sam,” she said, her voice just this side of flat. “Can’t exactly say I’m glad to see you two.”

She could see Sam frown at her unfriendliness, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Overly much. “Yeah, well, I’m actually kind of glad to see you; at least now maybe Dean will actually focus on trying to _find_ a job instead of just driving around, following some ‘hunch.’”

“Hey, my hunch was right!” Dean said defensively. “And just because _you’re_ so focused on distracting yourself before the second trial—“

“Dean,” Erin said sharply, catching the interested looks on the faces of the girls gathered around nearby. She stared at them, her eyes narrowed, and let just a hint of gold flash into her normally-grey eyes. They all immediately gasped and turned away, whispering madly. Come Monday, she knew that the news that there was a strange, yellow-eyed woman at the football game talking to two extremely hot guys—and there was no doubt who was going to be the most talked about of the three of them—was going to be all over the school.

Dean glanced over, then back at Erin, frowning slightly, but Erin simply gazed back at him steadily. “Look,” she said, finally transferring her focus back to Sam. “I’m flattered that you two are stalking me, really. But I really don’t need you two on my tail. So, thanks, but no thanks.” Erin turned and walked away, quickening her stride once she was out of sight. She slid behind the wheel of her stolen car and quickly drove off, trying not to give in to the tugging in her gut.

Well, it wasn’t from her gut, precisely. More like her soul.

***

Sam watched Erin walk off—again—before turning to Dean. “So, genius, any more bright ideas?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

Dean snorted and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “No,” he said, scowling. “No ideas, except…” He sighed, shoving his hands in his pocket after tossing his wrapper in a nearby trashcan. “Well, except to hope that maybe we’ll run into each other again.” He and Sam started walking for the exit.

Sam was quiet until they were in the parking lot. “Well, we can’t do anything until Kevin calls. So, I guess we go actually try to find a job.” He flushed and coughed a little guiltily.

Dean didn’t miss it. “You already found one, didn’t you?” he asked, his tone one of long-suffering fondness.

Sam grinned. “Yeah. It’s only about forty-five minutes away, in Weyers Cave. Local college, Blue Ridge Community College, has been having trouble with the electricity, plumbing, heating…”

“So normal ghost stuff?” Dean forced himself to smile slightly, tugging his mind away from the issue of Erin and back into hunting mode.

“Yeah. Did some digging; some guy died in one of the science labs. He was a moron, drank sulfuric acid on a dare. Family cremated him, though; so we need to figure out what’s keeping him here.” Sam slid into the passenger side door, shutting the door behind him.

“All right. We’ll head out there tomorrow morning; I don’t feel like driving anymore tonight.” The ride home was quiet, both brothers absorbed in their thoughts.

 

The next day Sam and Dean packed up all of their stuff, dumped it in the Impala, and headed for Weyers Cave, taking I-81. A bit more than forty-five minutes later, Dean was pulling into the parking lot of the college. Cutting the Impala off, Dean glanced over to his left, making an appreciative noise when he spotted a silver 2006 Dodge Charger SRT8. “Nice ride,” he commented, getting out of the Impala. He and Sam were both in their FBI uniforms, and they strode confidently into the lobby.

The secretary glanced up when they approached, and, not surprisingly, frowned when she saw their badges. What she said, however, _was_ surprising. “More agents? I just sent one in to talk to the Dean.” She eyed them suspiciously, and Sam let Dean do the sweet-talking necessary to convince her they were just sent to make sure, because there was… Well, Sam lost track of Dean’s excuse when he saw who was sitting in the chair opposite the Dean.

Sam waited until he and his brother were sitting in chairs before leaning over and hissing, “Erin’s here.”

“What?” Dean squawked, lowering his voice to repeat, “What?” when the secretary glared at them.

“She’s in there, talking to the Dean. I bet she’s working the same case we are.” Sam glanced through the window into the office; Erin was standing up and shaking the Dean’s hand. He and Dean both stood up as she walked out. Sam had to hand it to her; Erin could keep her poker face. “Hello, everything go well?” he asked, smiling a smile that didn’t exactly reach his eyes.

“Yes, let me walk you back to my car and I’ll fill you in,” Erin said, turning to once again thank the Dean and lead the Winchesters from the office.

“Whoa, wait, that’s _your_ car?” Dean asked, stopping as Erin pulled out a set of keys from her pocket and walking over to the Charger Dean had been admiring earlier.

Erin glanced over guiltily. “Stolen,” she said, her voice low. “Follow me, since I assume you’re working the same case.” She waited for Sam and Dean to slide back into the Impala before she started up the Charger, pulling out of the parking lot, the engine roaring.

Sam rolled his eyes as Dean moaned. “Oh, God, listen to that _engine_ ,” he groaned.

“Dean, please tell me you’re not getting hard just from listening to a damned engine.”

Sam smacked his face into the dash when Dean didn’t answer.

***

Erin drove them to the Harrisonburg Mall parking lot, where she pulled into a space next to an ’05 Dodge Neon. “You got it?” she called as she got out of the Charger, spotting the guy sitting on the hood of the Neon.

“Long as you got my payment,” he said, grinning widely as he hopped off, opening his arms wide for Erin. Erin laughed and stepped into them, hugging him tightly.

“I already paid you, dumbass,” she chuckled, smacking him lightly upside the head.

“Sweetheart, you know I ain’t one to pass up an opportunity to—Holy hell. Who are—Are they—“ The guy’s eyes widened almost comically, and Erin turned to face the Winchesters.

“Oh, them,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “Yeah, they’re who you think they are. Winchesters, this is Robin. Robin, Winchesters.”

None of them offered to shake hands, and Robin flashed the Winchesters a grin before his hand clamped down on Erin’s upper arm, spinning her away from them. “Do they know?” he hissed, his blue eyes narrowed, blue-and-black hair flopping in his face.

Erin rolled her eyes. “No. And I don’t plan on telling them; don’t ask why they’re here, I don’t know. Well, they’re working the same case I am, but I don’t know why they keep showing up everywhere I go.”

“Erin, honey, you know the more time you spend around them—“ Robin cut himself off as Erin’s eyes flashed.

“I know,” she snapped, not bothering to keep her voice down.. “You think I don’t? After Erik—“

“We are right here, you know,” Dean called. Erin glared at him over her shoulder.

“How could we not?” she retorted. Turning back to Robin, she paused only long enough to hiss, “Not one word,” before turning back to Sam and Dean. “All right, fine. Look, Robin here did some digging, and he thinks he knows what’s keeping the kid here: He lost his class ring in that lab before he drank the sulfuric acid. That’s what’s keeping him here. Obviously they haven’t found it yet, but I’ve got a plan to get in tonight and find it.”

“This plan _does_ involve us, doesn’t it?” Sam clarified, and suddenly both Winchesters were staring at her intensely.

“Well. It does now,” she said. “Could use a couple of guys to stand watch.” Not that she’d need it; she’d hear anyone coming long before she was in any danger. A thought occurred to her. “Oh, Robin, did you also find that extra item I requested?”

“Oh yeah!” Robin leaned in the open passenger window, rummaging around for a second before popping back out. “Fuck!” he cursed as his head smashed into the doorframe. He passed over a piece of fabric, and Erin smiled, her smile just a bit predatory. “One sample of eu de College Student, as requested. Be careful with it; took me a while to figure out how to get it without tying him down further.”

“I’ll be careful,” Erin promised. Glancing at her watch, she sighed. “Still got a couple of hours before we can head over.” She smirked at Sam and Dean. “Better go find a way to entertain yourselves, boys. Not going back to the college before ten o’clock.”

***

Erin led the way inside, bypassing the alarms and locks with startling swiftness. The ease with which she navigated the corridor, leading them straight to the chemistry lab, would have been almost enough to make Dean suspicious, except for the tiny little fact that he was already suspicious. Erin kept holding that piece of cloth that Robin had given her up to her nose and inhaling. If Dean didn’t know any better, he’d say she was sniffing it.

Erin stationed him and Sam just outside of the room, instructing them to keep an eye out for the janitor; he should be the only one still left in the building. She snarled at Sam’s offer to help and then ducked into the room.

Dean managed to make it three minutes before he finally caved. He nodded to Sam, and then stuck his head inside of the room, sweeping it for Erin. He found her against the back wall, on her hands and knees. Wrenching his sight away from her ass, which was waving enticingly in the air, he focused on her grunts and growls, which still didn’t really help.

“Aha!” she finally exclaimed, sitting up and holding up the ring victoriously. Dean just managed to yank his head back out of the door before she was bounding through it. “C’mon, I found it; we can use one of the Bunsen burners to get rid of it.”

Sam exchanged a look with Dean. “You sure it’s a good idea to burn that in the lab the ghost is haunting, that’s full of chemicals and sharp objects?” Sam asked finally.

Erin rolled her eyes. “The ghost is tied to the ring, he’d follow it no matter where we burned it,” she pointed out. “C’mon, you wuss. If you’re too chickenshit, you can just stand watch while I burn it.” She disappeared back into the room, and after a second both Dean and Sam followed her in.

Erin was setting up the burner, a small smile on her face. “I love modern technology; never have to set up a fire with two sticks nowadays,” she said, chuckling gleefully as the fire started burning blue. Dean quickly sprinkled salt and a little bit of gasoline over the ring, and Erin picked it up with a pair of tongs and held it over the fire. She looked more than a little deranged, grinning and chuckling gleefully as she watched the ring begin to burn.

When it was burned, she glanced around and sighed. “Little disappointed that the ghost never showed,” she said. Dean pulled out the EMF reader, and flicked it on.

“No sign of a ghost anymore,” he said. “Guess he didn’t realize what we did.”

“Either that, or he just wanted to go,” Erin said. She fell quiet. “I know the feeling.”

Dean looked at her in surprise. “How would you know the feeling?”

Erin glanced up at him, and he saw unease flicker through her gaze, igniting a flicker of… protectiveness, surprisingly enough, in Dean. She glanced away just as quickly, and started cleaning up. “I just do,” she murmured.

When they were done cleaning up, they walked back to the cars, and Dean suddenly reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Erin. You have to know that things like this are going to keep happening; I didn’t mean to follow you here, and yet—“

“And yet, here we are,” she finished for him. Erin shook her head. “Dean, I can’t. I’m not going to put you two through the same thing that I put—It was a long time ago. But suffice to say, it didn’t end well.”

“What makes you so sure that it’ll end that way again?” he asked, still not moving closer or farther away.

Erin took a deep breath and looked up and between the two brothers. Finally she sighed, and rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Fine. All right, fine. I can’t—Can’t stay away. Might as well give in to it now,” she muttered.

Dean had to fight down the whoop that wanted to burst out of him. “All right. Follow us, then.” They’d managed to locate a motel before they’d met Erin at the college, and Dean was suddenly sure that she would take the opportunity and run.

She didn’t, however, and a few minutes later they were both pulling up outside of a little motel on the outskirts of the city. Dean and Sam led the way, and as soon as they were inside, Erin threw her stuff on the bed closest to the bathroom. “I got first shower,” she announced, making a beeline for the bathroom. Dean laughed, shaking his head.

“I still can’t believe she agreed to this,” Sam chuckled, opening up the laptop. They discussed various places they could go after this, but they decided on just returning to the bunker when Erin emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. They both shut up, staring at her.

***

“Close your mouths, perverts,” Erin said mildly, rustling through her bag for a change of clothes. She darted back into the bathroom to change—she didn’t particularly want _that_ much of her on display—and then flopped onto the bed when she came back out. “God, I’m beat. I’m going to sleep.” She closed her eyes, only to open them a second later. “Oh. Yeah. I’m gonna have to ditch the Charger. Shame, it’s a good car. But if I’m going with you, it’s gonna be a bit suspicious to have two such beauties traveling together.”

Dean let out a disappointed noise, and Erin rolled her eyes. “What are you going to do with it, then?” Sam asked.

“Probably just leave it at a car lot. ‘S what I did with the other cars I used.” Erin shrugged and squirmed under the covers, grabbing the spare pillow on her bed and tucking it up against her side, wrapping her arms around it. “I’m bushed, so I’m going to bed now.”

Sam and Dean both looked at each other, then glanced over at the clock. “It’s only a bit after ten,” Dean said finally.

“And I’m tired. Your point?” Erin pulled the blanket up over her shoulder and closed her eyes, hoping that tonight she’d be able to sleep through the night.

Then again, sleep hadn’t exactly been kind to her lately.

 

The forms were indistinct, and that was the only clue Erin had that this was a nightmare, not reality. The body she was currently curling hers around felt real, solid, and so did the blows raining down upon them. She could feel the feet, hands, sticks, and other weapons impacting against her skin, and she whimpered. “No, please, don’t, he’s—“ Her voice choked off, tears clogging up her throat.

Something touched her shoulder, and she curled in on herself with a scream.

“Erin! Erin, it’s just me, it’s Sam.” Slowly, Erin let her eyes open. It was dark inside the motel room, but that didn’t really matter to Erin. She could still make out Dean’s form in front of her, and looking over her shoulder, Erin spotted Sam standing beside the bed.

Closing her eyes and choking back a sob, Erin reluctantly released her death grip on the pillow. Wiping the palm of her hand across her eyes, she slowly sat up. “I’m sorry. I—I was having a nightmare, wasn’t I?”

“Yeah. You were crying, whimpering. Kept saying something about a guy called ‘Erik,’” Dean said. Erin scooted back against the headboard, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

“Oh. Figures. I’d thought the nightmares were done with.” Erin pulled in a deep breath, reminding herself that Sam and Dean were with her, and while they were hunters, they weren’t going to hurt her. Not yet, anyway. “Guess I was wrong,” she added with a shaky smile.

Dean looked like he knew exactly what she was doing with the “brave face” act, and he didn’t believe it for a second. “Do you want… Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

Erin shook her head a little too quickly, and had to fight against the wave of dizziness. “No. No. I don’t—I don’t talk about it. Not anymore. There’s no one now who’d understand.”

“But there were, before? Why can’t you talk to them?” Sam was frowning; Erin could hear it, even if she couldn’t see it.

“Because they’re dead,” she snapped. “Now, sorry, but I need to go walk. I’ll be back before dawn, don’t worry. I’m not going to run off on you again.” She shoved the covers back and walked across the bed before dropping down and crouching next to her duffel, grabbing clothes and a jacket that she immediately began changing into.

“Erin, wait—“ Dean started, but Erin cut him off.

“No, Dean. I know how to handle these. Like I said, I just need to go walk around, remind myself that it all happened a long time ago.” Erin pinned him and Sam both with a glare as she walked out the door. “I’ll be back sometime before dawn,” she said, promised, as she walked through the door, closing it behind her.

Walking down the street, Erin pushed a hand through her hair, taking in deep breaths of the cool, crisp autumn night air. She used to have the nightmares for years after Erik died, but she’d thought they’d finally gone away—that her soul had finally gotten over the trauma of losing its mate. The way he’d been lost certainly didn’t help. Then she’d run into the Winchesters—literally—and the nightmares had started again, worse than ever. If she hadn’t already pretty much put together the clues of the strange tugging sensation the three of them seemed to share, then this would cinch it.

The Winchesters were her soulmates.

But that didn’t sound exactly right; souls were only meant to have one mate. Two souls, bonded together. So how could _both_ Winchesters be her mate? The attraction was equal between them, but they weren’t clones or anything like that. They’d been born four years apart, so unless…

Erin’s steps slowed as she thought about it. Four years was nothing to a soul; they were timeless. And if a soul was split—though who would have the power to split a soul, Erin didn’t know—then four years to the other half of the soul wouldn’t be more than the blink of an eye to a human. And that… That was certainly something to ponder. It definitely cleared up several things, such as _why_ the Winchesters couldn’t let go of each other, why they kept coming back for each other, to each other. They were literally two halves of one soul, they could not live properly without the other. And the way that she’d heard of the cupid telling them that their parents’ marriage was a big deal in Heaven, that Dean and Sam Winchester _had_ to be born, certainly fit. The soul may have split itself, may have already attached the two halves to the boys who bore the blood of vessels, and could be used as vessels for Michael and Lucifer.

Slowly, Erin made her way back to the motel, eventually arriving as the sun was just starting to crest the horizon. She let herself into the room, and wasn’t surprised to find Dean and Sam both still up.

Sam was on his feet the instant she walked through the door, Dean following a second later. “Erin,” Sam said, and that one word held a wealth of relief.

“Hey,” she offered, one side of her mouth quirking up as she studied the two brothers in light of her recent revelations.

Dean looked like he wanted to ask her where she’d been, but thankfully all he asked was, “Good walk?”

Erin nodded. “Yeah. Figured several things out,” she said, but didn’t offer any more information as she walked over to her duffel and rooted through it, digging out her own laptop. She booted it up while Sam and Dean got ready, and then she turned the screen to show them a few jobs she’d found.

***

The next few months fell into an easy rhythm, though no two days or jobs were much alike. The only constant was every night, Erin would inevitably become so distressed in her sleep that she woke Sam and Dean, and when they woke her, she would leave the room to go for a walk. Dean and Sam never tried to follow her—though Dean had attempted to convince Sam to—and they never brought the nightmares up during the day.

The three of them were working a job in California when Erin ran into a man who said he knew her. He claimed to remember her from when he was in middle school, said she hadn’t aged a day. Looking uncomfortable, Erin managed to convince him that he must be thinking of someone else, and he dropped the issue.

Afterwards, Erin was laying in the backseat of the Impala when Dean glanced over at Sam before saying, “So. Knew you when he was in middle school, huh?”

He could almost feel her tensing up. “Dean, I thought we established that he was thinking of someone else.”

“Yeah, you and he did. Me, on the other hand… Well, I’m just a little curious. It usually pays to be curious when you’re a hunter; it could end up saving your life.”

“Or ending it,” Erin said bluntly, the hint of a snarl to her voice. “He was imagining things, Dean. There’s no such thing as an immortal human.”

Dean was quiet for a moment, but before he could respond, Sam spoke up: “I’ve been thinking about that, actually. And… Well, Erin, you _are_ human, aren’t you?” Dean felt his shoulders tense as he waited for Erin’s reply. It took just a heartbeat too long to come.

“Do I look like a monster?” Erin’s attempt at a joke was weak, and they all knew it.

 

A few days later, they managed to track down the shifter who’d been attacking the town. It had just thrown Dean against a wall, so he wasn’t thinking too clearly, but he could have sworn that he saw the thing tear into Erin’s side, leaving a gash deep enough to kill. Dean could almost feel the pain that she must have been in, but it didn’t seem to slow her one bit as she lunged for the gun that Dean had dropped and then turned, expertly firing a silver bullet into the shifter’s heart.

The next thing Dean knew, Sam was helping him to his feet while Erin removed her shirt and began poking at the wound. “Damn,” he heard her mutter. “That’s gonna need stitches.” Pausing only long enough to pick up her shirt, Erin headed out to the Impala. By the time Dean and Sam caught up to her, she was busy stitching up her side, which already…

Dean must have hit his head harder than he’d thought; the wound already looked several days old. Erin must have caught his stare, because she shifted uncomfortably before snapping, “Go ahead. Spit out.”

“That looks like it’s already half-healed.” Now Dean was openly staring at the wound, which seemed to be healing even as he watched.

“Yeah. That’s because it is; I just need something to keep this closed so that it doesn’t scar too badly, or close thinly.” Erin resumed her stitching, but Dean could see that her shoulders were tense as she waited for the next question.

Dean couldn’t find the strength to voice the word, but Sam did. “How?” he asked.

Erin sighed and tied off the last stitch before turning to face them. “Because I’m immortal. Part of my curse.”

Dean and Sam looked at each other, their expressions startled. “Curse?” Sam finally asked.

Erin shrugged. “Yeah. Couple… Well, not exactly a couple, but… You know, I don’t even know how long ago it was, now,” she mused thoughtfully. Catching the impatient look on Dean’s face, she hurriedly said, “This guy… he caught me, way back when. Like I said, I have no clue how long ago it actually was, but it was a long, _long_ time ago, I remember that much. He caught me and my friends off guard, when we ventured outside of the city—even though the priests had told us not to leave the city, precisely because of this man—and I was the only one who survived the first few days of the curse.”

“Anything else this curse entails?” Dean asked. “Just so we don’t get any more nasty surprises.”

“No,” Erin said, her voice just a bit too breathless. She really did not want to tell Sam and Dean about the other part. She could tell that the Winchesters didn’t quite trust her, but she didn’t offer any more details. She wasn’t entirely sure she trusted them, either.

***

Sam was quiet as they drove back to the bunker after salting and burning the body of the shifter—one of Erin’s insistences. She always salted and burned the body of whatever monster they killed; she claimed it made things a lot simpler, a lot less explaining to do. All you had to tell the family was that the person had disappeared, if they managed to corner you and ask before you could get out of town.

Sam’s thoughts were whirling through his mind almost faster than he could keep up with, thoughts like, _Was Erin really telling us everything? How do we know if she’s not?_

Eventually he could hear Erin’s breathing softening and slowing from her spot in the backseat. Once he was sure that she was asleep, Sam turned to Dean. “Do you believe her?” he asked without preamble.

“No.” Dean’s reply was immediate. “She’s still hiding something from us, Sam.”

Sam fell quiet for another few seconds before replying, “Do we really deserve all of her trust, though?” Catching the incredulous look on Dean’s face, he hastened to add, “Well, look at us! We don’t trust her; we’re questioning whether or not she’s telling us the truth about this ‘curse’ of hers. Why should she trust us, if we don’t trust her?”

“So what?” Dean snapped, glaring at Sam for a moment before returning his focus to the road. “You’re going to just accept her bullshit story that she’s only—what? Immortal? Self-healing?”

“I’m not going to push!” Sam growled. “Dean, we have done exactly jack _shit_ to prove to her that she can trust us. And, hell—if there _is_ something more to her curse than just immortality, we’re _hunters_ , first and foremost, Dean. More likely than not, the rest of her curse makes her… less-than-human.”

Sam could see that he’d given his brother something to chew over for the rest of the drive to the bunker, so he kept quiet. Once they’d gotten back to the bunker, Sam left Dean to get Erin back into the bunker as he headed for the oldest section of books, a section he hadn’t even visited yet, since he hadn’t been able to decipher them.

He browsed the shelves, chuckling when he heard Erin’s outraged shout as Dean dumped her on the spare bed—after the number of times she’d fallen asleep on the way home, she really should have been expecting it by now.

As he turned back to the shelves, a book tucked in behind several others caught his eye. He pulled the others out and then cautiously pulled the old—extremely old; it almost felt like the only thing keeping it from falling apart in his hands was some sort of spell—journal, and carefully wiped the dust off. He sucked in a breath when he saw the symbol on the cover.

It was the same one tattooed on Erin’s hip.

Sam carried the journal out to the main room, where Dean was sitting and fiddling with his Walkman-turned-EMT. He laid the journal on the table, tapping it with a finger. “Look what I found.”

Dean glanced over. “So? It’s a book. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are thousands of them in this bunker.”

Sam snorted and tapped on the symbol on the cover. “Dean. It’s the same symbol—“

“As Erin’s tattoo,” Dean finished, sitting up straight and setting the EMT to the side, his face registering dawning recognition. He glanced up at Sam before studying the symbol. “So you think… what, exactly?” he asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“I think this is as old as she claims to be. There’s a spell holding it together, preserving it. It was hidden, too—“

“And for good reason,” Erin snapped. Sam jumped as she stepped up beside him.

“Jesus Christ, Erin!” he yelped. “Give a guy some warning.”

Erin just glared at him. “Sam, if a book is hidden, then there’s usually a reason for it. Trust me, you want _nothing_ to do with that journal; I remember the bastard who wrote it. Whatever he wrote about, it’s not something that hunters should know about. I don’t even know how the Men of Letters were able to get their hands on it.”

“What do you mean, ‘not something that hunters should know about’?” Dean asked, looking at Erin suspiciously.

“I mean, secrets about our culture that are best left hidden! There’s a _reason_ no one can read Clannish anymore,” Erin snarled, reaching for the book, but Sam beat her to it.

“Clannish?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow as he raised the book out of reach. Childish move, he knew, but he couldn’t exactly bring himself to regret it. He found it interesting that Erin paled, as if she’d not meant to let that slip.

“It’s… It’s the writing in that book,” Erin faltered. “Sam, please, give it to me so I can despell it and salt and burn it. Please, you _don’t_ want to know what’s in there.”

“Funny, but the more you say that, the more curious _I_ grow,” Dean commented, getting to his feet and moving to stand next to Erin, who glared at him.

“Fuck off, Dean. You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” Erin growled, her hands curling into fists. Sam could see her fingernails digging into her palms hard enough that he was surprised he didn’t see blood.

“Then enlighten us,” he entreated, still holding the book out of reach. “And what’s this about there being a reason no one can read Clannish anymore?” He employed his best puppy-dog face, and Erin only managed to hold out against it for another few minutes.

“No one can read it because they’re all dead,” Erin sighed, rubbing a hand across her face. “All except for one: A female Alpha. No one knows for sure if she’s still alive; her Jaguar was last seen several centuries ago.”

“Her Jaguar?” Sam asked, frowning.

“Yes. The Clan were essentially shapeshifters; they could take the form of a big cat at will. Only one cat to each Clanmate, though.” Erin sat down on the table, pulling her feet up under her so that she was sitting Indian style. “May I please see the book? I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I was the one holding it.”

“Why?” Even as Sam asked, he could feel an uncomfortable heat beginning to spread from his hand—the one holding the journal—down his arm.

“Please, Sam,” Erin repeated, and Sam hesitated only a moment more before handing it over to Erin, who took it with a wince, like she expected it to bite her or something.

“Now, why do you have the same symbol tattooed on your hip?” Dean asked.

Erin glanced over at him in surprise. “How do you know about that?”

“Saw it in the police report from Missoula,” he said, his gaze still steadily riveted on her.

Erin shrugged. “I got it when I was… Eighteen summers? Yeah, that sounds about right. It’s supposed to be a protection sigil, protects against all but the most powerful supernatural things."

“I’m guessing whoever made you immortal—“ Christ, Sam still had a bit of trouble wrapping his mind around that—“was one of those exceptions?”

Erin nodded. “Yeah, he was. Look, you _really_ don’t want to know what’s in this journal; the guy who wrote it was executed just for writing it. The things he wrote down were only supposed to be passed down orally. The Clan was very… stringent, I guess you could say, when it came to upholding their laws.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about this ‘Clan,’” Dean observed, his arms crossed over his chest, one hip resting on the back of a nearby chair.

Erin shifted uneasily on the table, and Sam resisted the urge to glare at Dean. Truth be told, he was curious about that as well. “The Clan had no single pinpointed beginning,” she began. “They just… were. They used to be well-respected, even liked. Until Moses, when he led his people from Egypt. He wasn’t just leading the Hebrews from Egypt, he was leading his Clan. He was a Beta, but since there were no Alphas to lead the Clan, God chose him to lead the Clan.”

“Wait, Beta?” Sam asked, sitting down in one of the chairs and facing Erin more fully. “What are Betas?”

“There’s three types of Clanmate: Alpha, Beta, and Omega. Omegas were basically a step up from slaves; they did everything asked of them, but if they were truly uncomfortable with doing something, then it was illegal—punishable by death—to force them to do whatever that act was. Betas were basically the warriors; they’re the ones who protected and provided for the individual Tribes. Betas and Omegas were the most common, and they lived the lifespans of the average human and reproduced in the usual way. Alphas were the most powerful, and the rarest; female Alphas exceptionally so. As such, all Alphas were immortal. The older the Alpha, the more powerful. Alphas could still be killed, however.

“All Clan possessed the ability to take the skin of a big cat. In this form, they were at their most powerful physically. Their senses were heightened to unbelievable strengths, and their physical strength and speed were astonishing. However, they were also at their most vulnerable: While in the cat’s skin, a Clanmate could be most easily killed. Basically, any way you would kill a big cat—arrow through the heart, knife across the jugular, et cetera—you could kill a Clanmate who was wearing the catskin.”

“But you said their senses were heightened,” Dean said. “Shouldn’t they have been able to sense the coming stranger or assassin?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Erin acknowledged. “However, everyone makes mistakes. At any rate, it wasn’t until after Moses led his Clan from Egypt that the Clan became hated. Hunters began coming after Tribes. They slaughtered entire Tribes in a night—including the Alphas, whenever they had the numbers to do so.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked curiously. “If the Alphas were immortal, shouldn’t they be impossible to kill?”

“No. Anything can be killed, Sam. For Alphas, their immortality was preserved with the same ability I have: self-healing. If you could catch an Alpha in the catskin, it was infinitely easier to kill them. If you caught them while they were human, then you had to… overload their system. Wound them so badly and frequently that their systems couldn’t handle it and eventually shut down. Alphas could heal like the Leviathans; even if you dismembered them, they could still heal from it. The older the Alpha, the harder to kill.”

***

Sam and Dean glanced at each other, and Erin could still read suspicion in their expressions. Sam seemed slightly less suspicious than Dean, but only slightly. “Look,” Erin said after a few moments of tense, silent communication between the two brothers during which she felt decidedly cold-shouldered, “I didn’t want to tell any of you about this.”

“Obviously,” Dean muttered, and Erin glared at him.

“The Clan has been forgotten, and most of the time it’s better if something stays forgotten.” Erin hopped off of the table, clutching the Alpha’s Journal to her chest. She could feel the power beating through its pages, and the sooner she got rid of it, the better.

“Erin, you’re not… not in any danger because you know about the Clan, are you?” Sam asked, reaching out to lay a hand on her shoulder.

Erin flinched from his touch. “No, I’m not in any danger from knowing about the Clan,” she assured him. _My troubles come from something else entirely._

It was a painstaking process to remove the protection spells from the Journal, and by the time Erin managed to do that, she was sweating and cursing fluently. The book was now not so much a book as a pile of papers and leather. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Erin turned to the table that the gasoline, salt, and matches were sitting on. She picked up the salt and dumped the entire contents on top of the pile, making sure to spread it around so the salt thoroughly coated every surface of every page and piece of leather. Then she picked up the gasoline and doused it liberally before striking the matchbox and dropping the entire box of matches on top. The gasoline and papers caught quickly, and soon Erin was standing before a roaring pyre, her face lit by the orange glow of the flames.

A few seconds later, Erin frowned. She thought… Well, she thought that she heard a faint whimpering coming from the fire. She leaned closer—probably not the wisest decision she’d ever made—just in time to get a faceful of flames as the pages suddenly exploded with a scream that was a mix of human and cat.

Afterwards, Erin was sweeping up the ashes from the fire, separating them into different containers, just in case the moron of an author had coated the pages in Alpha’s blood. She could sense Sam watching her curiously, but she kept her back to him, refusing to acknowledge his presence. She didn’t particularly want to answer any more questions today.

***

It was another several weeks and a few more hunts before the issue of the Clan came up again. Well, came up again verbally. Sam could feel it hovering in the background, the proverbial elephant in the room, and he knew that Erin and Dean could, too. He didn’t know why Dean didn’t bring it up, but he thought it was something along the lines of the same reasons why Sam didn’t bring it up: fear. Sam was honestly afraid to know why and how Erin knew so much about the Clan, and why she didn’t want them to know what she knew.

Ever since Erin had destroyed the journal, she had been unusually quiet. She didn’t really speak unless spoken to, she just hung around in the background of interviews with witnesses, and she always stayed in the motel room after the hunts were finished and the monster was killed instead of joining Sam and Dean like she had previously for celebratory beers. It was starting to worry Sam. She wasn’t herself.

That thought had given Sam pause the first time he’d thought it. Erin had been in the main room of the bunker, her nose buried in a book—which wasn’t unusual in and of itself—but she didn’t look up when he entered the room, didn’t smile, didn’t even acknowledge him when he called her name. Sam hadn’t realized just how many little actions Erin did every day until she wasn’t doing them anymore.

On this hunt, Erin had been exceptionally quiet, and Sam had yet to see the frown lift from her face. She was worried and upset by something, but he would be damned if he knew what. It was just a usual job, hunting down a nest of vampires, so there should have been nothing to worry about. Certainly nothing to worry about to the extent which Erin was obviously worrying.

They’d finally managed to locate the nest and ascertain how many vampires would be there, and Erin and Dean had left to go take care of the nest while Sam stayed behind to talk with Kevin over the phone. Kevin thought that he’d finally managed to figure out what the second trial would be, and Sam needed to talk to him without Dean hovering over his shoulder, pulling the whole “overprotective big brother” act.

 _They’re late,_ was Sam’s thought right before something started pounding on the door to the motel room. He got to his feet and practically sprinted for the door, opening it only to find Erin supporting a barely conscious Dean. “What the hell happened?” he demanded as he helped Erin get his brother into the room, shutting the door behind him.

As they laid Dean down on the bed farthest from the door, Erin explained, her voice tense. “There were more than we thought, and for some reason they had sentinels. I don’t know why, maybe they were tipped off, told to watch out for us. Either way, it took one hell of a lot to even get into the building, and when we did, there were more waiting for us. Dean had been bitten several times, he’d lost a lot of blood, and he was taking the head off of the second to last one when I saw another heading straight for him. I didn’t get there in time, the vampire—must have been really young, from the way he was acting—attached itself to Dean’s neck and started drinking. I managed to get him off—

“Not you,” Dean insisted, his voice weak and thready. “Cat. Big ‘un.”

“Shut up, Dean, I told you, you’re hallucinating,” Erin said shortly. Sam looked at her in surprise. “He thinks he saw some sort of big cat come and knock the vampire off of him. I told him he’s hallucinating; he lost a lot of blood. I had to give him some of mine just to get him here.”

Sam forgot about his brother’s hallucination when he heard that last bit. “Some of your blood?” he repeated incredulously. “What—How—What—I mean, how is that going to affect him?”

“He’s not gonna become immortal, if that’s what you’re worried about. The curse doesn’t transfer that way. All my blood did was give him strength and help kick-start the healing process,” Erin clarified. “Anyway, so I managed to get the vampire off of him—and it _was_ me, Dean, not some damned random cat—get its head off, and then I went ahead and salted and burned the bodies.”

Sam still didn’t get why Erin insisted on salting and burning the bodies of every monster they killed, but now really wasn’t the time to question it. “Okay then. So, any side effects from your blood? And how long should the healing take?”

“Healing should take a little shorter than normal, now that my blood is in his system. He’ll also probably live a little longer than he would have otherwise, but he’s in no way immortal. At most, this’ll add another year or two to his lifespan, assuming the jackass doesn’t get himself killed by a vampire or shifter.” Here Erin glared at Dean, but Sam could sense the fond exasperation beneath the heat.

He frowned slightly at the tightness in his chest and gut. It felt… Well, it felt suspiciously like jealousy. He shoved it aside for now; the important thing was to make sure Dean was really okay. “Well, I guess we need to head back to the batcave, then,” he said, still eyeing Dean dubiously. His brother wasn’t an idiot; he would know what he was talking about, even when he was in pain. If he thought that he saw a big cat, then Sam believed him. But, he also wanted to believe Erin, wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. If Dean had lost enough blood to have warranted her risking giving Dean some of hers, then maybe—just maybe—Dean was in worse condition than he thought.

Still, Sam didn’t miss the worried glance that Erin sent Dean.

He tried to write it off as concern for Dean’s health.

***

Dean drifted in and out of awareness. He never actually lost consciousness, but his periods of lucidness were few and far between. Mostly, he was just high as a fucking kite. Attached to a spaceship—No, attached to the TARDIS. As Eleven piloted it through the system, trying to solve the mystery of Clara. And saving dinosaurs on space ships. No, wait. The dinosaurs were there before Eleven found Clara. Who the hell was Clara, anyway? TARDIS didn’t like her. If TARDIS didn’t like her, then they did Eleven?

What was Dean trying to figure out, anyway?

Oh yeah.

Erin.

And the big cat.

Dean _knew_ he’d seen a big cat—spotted pelt, too—tear the vampire off of him. Then tear the vampire’s head off. Maybe that was why Erin insisted on burning the bodies before she’d take Dean back to Sammy. Had to get rid of the evidence that she was lying when she told Sam that she had been the one to save Dean’s ass.

Not that Dean’s ass had needed saving.

He’d had things perfectly under control.

…

Mostly.

Okay, not really.

He really had been in trouble, hadn’t even noticed that there was a newly changed vampire heading for his throat.

Didn’t mean Erin had to go all macho and save his skin, though.

Why had she changed her skin?

Why couldn’t she have just used her human skin?

Unless….

Dean’s brain hurt.

***

Erin worried her lower lip with her teeth as she glanced into the backseat. “You’re sure he’s okay?” she asked Sam for the umpteenth time.

Sam heaved a sigh of long-sufferance. “Yes, he’s fine. High as fuck, but fine.” They lapsed into silence for another mile or so before Sam asked, “Why are you so worried about him?”

“Because… Well, I haven’t had to share my blood for—God. Must be millennia. So, I don’t know. You know that humans are constantly evolving, so I didn’t know how it would affect him now, since technically I stopped aging and evolving whenever it was that I was changed." Erin’s bottom lip was going to be really sore if she didn’t find another way to exorcise her agitation.

“Speaking of,” Sam interjected. “How old are you?”

“I thought I already told you that I don’t know how old I am,” Erin said, her face pulling into a frown.

“Okay, then, let me rephrase: What is your earliest memory?”

Erin hadn’t tried to sort through the millennias’ worth of memories in centuries. The last time had given her a monster headache that hadn’t gone away for three days. Sam was quiet as she thought. “I think… I was in the temple, and the priests were telling the young people about the dangerous rogue. Warning us to not stray outside of the city without at least one of the soldiers.”

“That’s specific,” Sam commented dryly.

“Shut up,” Erin shot back irritably. “I think it was in the temple of… Aorta Magna? No. Ahura Mazda.”

Sam sat up straighter, his grip tightening noticeably on the steering wheel of the Impala at Erin’s words. “Ahura Mazda?” he repeated, glancing at her for verification. She nodded, and then waited as he was silent, apparently searching for words. “Ahura Mazda,” he said finally, “was the ‘good’ god of Zoroastrianism.”

“Why does that sound familiar?” Erin asked, frowning thoughtfully as she rubbed the back of her neck. She felt like she should know that word, know what it meant, but she was drawing a complete blank.

“It was the religion of the Mesopotamian empire. Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were the main gods.”

“I remember Angra Mainyu. Angra Mainyu didn’t have a temple; he was bad, evil,” Erin put in. “We—everyone in the village—feared him.”

Sam nodded. “So, you’re obviously from Mesopotamia. Which would make you… Christ, at least two thousand years old.”

Erin frowned. “No, longer than that. I remember Jesus being born. I think…” It almost physically hurt to strain her memory this far, but… “I think I remember… What’s-His-Face, Sargon, being emperor.”

Erin had to grab for the dashboard to keep from falling over into Sam’s lap when he jumped badly enough to yank the steering wheel. “ _Sargon_?” he repeated incredulously after he got the Impala back under control.

Erin watched him warily. “Yes, Sargon. Why?” Sam continued staring at her, making her grow more uncomfortable, until she finally mumbled, “Keep your eyes on the road,” even though there was no one around them.

Sam turned back to the road before saying, “If you remember Sargon being emperor, then that puts your birth somewhere around twenty-four-fifty BC. That’s… Well, that’s mind-boggling."

Erin shrugged. “I generally try _not_ to remember that far back. It gives me a headache.”

Sam was still in shocked silence, and the silence began to grow awkward. Erin couldn’t think of anything to say to break it, however, so they both just sat there in silence—occasionally broken by Dean’s delirious, half-asleep muttering—until they made it back to the bunker.

***

The next thing Dean remembered was waking up in a bed. He was confused for a second, but then everything hit him in a rush. Erin, Sam, going after the vampires, the cat, Erin, the hotel room, Erin lying to Sammy…

Groaning, Dean sat up, rubbing his face. His head hurt like a mother, and he couldn’t figure out where the ringing in his ears was coming from. Glancing around his room, he spotted a glass of water and some pills laying on the bedside table, and he gratefully gulped them down, chasing them with a long pull from the glass, almost draining it.

Gingerly, Dean got to his feet, testing his balance. Deciding he could stand on his own, he tried walking. He made it out of his room and down the hall, following the sound of Erin and Sam’s voices drifting from the main library. “Christ, could you guys be any quieter?” he muttered, slumping into one of the chairs around the table.

Erin and Sam immediately shut up. “Sorry,” Sam said, while Erin just eyed him warily. Dean glared at her; he still wasn’t buying that cock-and-bull story about Erin being the one to save him.

_Maybe she’s just omitting something._

The errant thought made him frown more heavily; what could she be omitting? If she was a skinwalker, she wouldn’t have been able to stand the silver that she came into contact with on an almost-daily basis. Deciding to ignore it for now, he instead turned to Sam. “How long was I out?” he asked.

“About twelve hours,” Sam replied, closing the book he’d been holding. Dean reached over and snatched it from Sam’s grasp, raising an eyebrow when he saw the title.

“Mesopotamia? What the hell is that?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

“It’s an ancient country,” Sam began.

“My country, actually,” Erin interjected, gazing steadily at Dean. “I was born there, Sam thinks about twenty-four-fifty BC.”

Dean eyed her assessingly. “Don’t look a day over 2,000,” he said dryly. “So seriously? That makes you, what? 4,450 years old?”

Erin shrugged. “Something like that.”

“Wow.” That was certainly something new to adjust to. Especially after the bombshell that Erin was immortal. It was one thing to know that—theoretically—she could be over a thousand years old, another to have an actual, fairly accurate age to put on her. Dean thought back to the first hunt they’d done together, the one in Weyers Cave, Virginia. “That’s why you said you know the feeling of wanting to simply move on,” he realized.

Erin looked at him quizically. “What do you mean?” she asked, frowning slightly.

“After you burned that kid’s class ring, back on our first hunt together at that community college. Sam commented on how the ghost didn’t put up a fuss, and you suggested that maybe he just wanted to move on. And then you added that you knew the feeling.”

Erin now looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Yeah. Yes, I do know the feeling. Especially after…” Her voice trailed off, and her gaze grew… Well, to use a cliché, it grew distant. Dean coughed, and Erin almost jumped out of her seat. “Oh, sorry,” she mumbled, blushing. “It’s just… Well, I didn’t used to really think about how long I’d been alive, and how… _alone_ , I was. But, well, perspectives change.” She shrugged.

“And why did yours?” Sam’s voice was quietly curious, and he was looking at Erin intently. She shifted uneasily in her seat.

“I… It’s nothing,” she said finally. “I don’t talk about it anymore. Suffice to say, I don’t form emotional attachments.” She stood up suddenly and left the room, both Winchesters watching her leave, their expressions nearly mirror images of curiosity and shock.

“I wonder why she did that?” Dean asked. Sam just shrugged.

“Who knows?” Sam answered, shrugging.

***

It was another few months before Sam found out that Dean had been right about the big cat saving his ass.

It had been another hunt—Wendigo, this time—when he found himself flat on his back, Dean struggling to regain his breath and footing too far away to help, and Erin standing several feet away as the wendigo came for his throat.

“ _No!_ ”

The scream tore itself from Erin’s throat, and Sam saw her launch herself at the wendigo—and what was she thinking, just _throwing_ herself at the damn thing?—but his jaw dropped as she seemed to waver midair, and then suddenly it wasn’t Erin flying through the air, it was a jaguar.

As the spotted cat flew through the air and impacted with the wendigo, knocking it to the side, several things flashed through Sam’s mind, falling into place.

Erin’s senses—Dean had told him about the sniffing thing from their first hunt.

The immortality.

The last known Clanmate alive was a female Alpha who could wear the skin of a jaguar.

Dean’s hallucination of a big, spotted cat saving his ass from a newborn vamp.

Erin.

She was the last Alpha.

***

After the hunt, as they were standing around the burning body of the wendigo, Erin glanced up, swallowed nervously at the looks on Sam and Dean’s faces, and said quickly, “I couldn’t watch it happen again.”

That threw them for a loop, she could tell. “Watch what?” Dean asked warily.

“Watch my closest friends die,” she said simply. When Sam and Dean simply gazed at her uncomprehendingly, she sighed softly and continued, “The last time I shifted was when my Tribe was attacked and massacred. My mate—Erik—was also an Alpha; we were caught unawares, by the time we woke up, every Beta and Omega was dead. They—the hunters—made me watch as they killed Erik. When he died, the jaguar took over; I didn’t have a choice. She was so mad…” Erin forced herself away from the memories. “She—I—couldn’t go through that again, watching our family die.”

“So you’re the last Alpha,” Sam said after another several moments filled only with the dying crackles of the fire. Erin nodded once.

“Yes. Erik and I were the last. When he died, I became the only living Alpha.”

Dean studied Erin for another few moments. “And you didn’t tell us this because…?”

Erin rolled her eyes. “Dean, Sam. You’re hunters. You found the Men of Letters’ base. Do you really think I could have known for certain that the Men of Letters had never— _never_ —mentioned the Clan before, that with my luck you would have read those mentions, put everything together? I couldn’t take a chance on that.”

“Why not? You’re immortal; what threat do we pose to you?” Dean demanded, taking a step forward.

“A pretty damn big one!” Erin exploded, her fists clenching and her fact contorting into a snarl. “You two don’t get it, do you? I haven’t felt this— _connected_ —to anyone in almost longer than I can remember. I wasn’t even this connected to Erik, and he was my _mate_.”

Sam stepped between them, holding up a hand. “Look, now is not the time to hash this out. Personally, I don’t like that Erin held this from us,” he said, giving Dean a pointed look, “ but I can see her reasons. We didn’t exactly trust her, either, did we?”

“No, but—“

“But nothing. Now we just go back to the bunker and sort this stuff out. Kevin thinks he’s got a lead on the next trial, and I think that that’s more important than the fact that Erin is the last member of an almost-extinct race. She hasn’t killed us yet, Dean; I don’t think she will now.”

“No matter how obnoxious you get,” Erin muttered as she followed the Winchesters back to the Impala. She literally could not even think of them dead; it stole the very breath from her lungs, something she hadn’t felt in so long, that now it scared her like few things did, or could. She felt like she should know why, but she couldn’t pin it down.

***

It was another few months after that conversation that things started to go downhill. Sam had completed the second trial—return an innocent soul to Heaven—and Kevin said that he was almost done translating the third trial. Cas was still MIA, and Crowley was still being his normal, jackass-ish self, but the three of them were managing to cope pretty well, Erin thought.

Every day, though, Erin could feel the three of them growing closer, and especially during the past month, the looks that Sam and Dean had been exchanging and throwing her way when they thought that she wasn’t looking were only working to confirm her suspicions.

Erin’s thoughts were interrupted by Sam’s voice. “Hey, Erin, look at this,” Sam called.

“Christ, Sam, I just sat down!” Erin called back, her voice colored with irritation. They’d recently gotten back from hunting down a witch who was trying to become a necromancer, and Erin had taken the brunt of the force from the one corpse the witch had managed to reanimate. She was still sore.

Grumbling unintelligibly, Sam got up from his seat and brought the laptop over to the couch Erin was sitting on. “Here,” he said, turning the laptop to face her. On the screen was a detailed police report of the victim of what appeared to be a vicious dog attack, except that there were no corresponding reports of wild dogs or a pet running wild, or any sort of violent animals anywhere near the city. Erin raised an eyebrow.

“So what? You thinking skinwalkers?” she asked, looking at Sam as she took a swig of her beer. She didn’t miss the way his eyes tracked the movement of her throat, and she smirked inwardly. Both Winchester boys thought they were so subtle, but they really weren’t.

Sam nodded. “Dean and I ran into a pack of skinwalkers a couple years back. The leader of that pack was trying to convert basically half of a small town into skinwalkers, had placed some of his own pack into various homes as house pets.”

“So what? We go, find the leader of that pack, kill him, and the rest of the pack will leave?”

Sam shifted guiltily. “We kind of ended up killing all but one member of the pack,” he mumbled. Erin snickered.

“Well, you two don’t do anything by half, do you?” she teased.

“We don’t believe in doing _anything_ by halves,” Sam said, his face suddenly softening but also sharpening at the same time, a wicked gleam entering his eyes as he smiled seductively at her.

Erin laughed and smacked him in the back of the head. “Oh, knock it off, Sam; you know I’m not going to choose between you two,” she smirked.

Dean chose that moment to walk in. “I sure as hell ain’t inviting _him_ into anything we do,” he said, jerking his thumb at Sam.

Erin cackled. “Aw, Dean, weren’t you ever taught to share?” she pouted. Sam made a retching noise and she smacked him in the back of the head again.

“Hey!” he protested indignantly.

“You’re such a girl,” Dean and Erin said at the same time, identical grins on their faces.

Sam just flipped them both off.

 

As soon as they entered the small town in Wisconsin, Erin knew something was wrong. Yes, there was the tell-tale smell of fear and uncertainty in the air, but the air was also charged with a strange tension, almost a sense of… waiting.

Erin waited until they had found a motel room before voicing her concerns. “I don’t like this,” she said anxiously, looking out of the windows nervously. “The air feels… expectant. Something’s waiting.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Erin, that’s just the jaguar talking—“

“The jaguar’s kept me alive more than once!” Erin snapped, glaring at Dean with her teeth bared before returning to staring out of the window. “It’s not just her. The whole town, everybody, is waiting for something.” She jumped when Sam laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Erin,” he said gently. “We know what we’re doing; we’re not going to get caught off guard.”

Erin shook her head frantically. “It’s more than that,” she insisted. “This whole hunt has seemed… Well, it’s seemed too much like a setup! Guys, we _shouldn’t_ be here.” She took a few deep breaths, trying to get herself under control. She knew that Dean and Sam wouldn’t take her seriously if she didn’t.

“Erin, hey, it’s fine,” Dean said, sounding surprised. Erin caught the glance between them that clearly said, _What is her problem?_

Erin rubbed her forehead. “No, it’s not, Dean,” she said in a low voice tinged with resignation. “It’s not. This is going to end very badly.”

***

Sam watched Erin leave the motel room—she had an appointment with the local coroner’s office. As soon he was sure that she was gone, he turned to Dean. “What the heck was that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Dean said, shrugging helplessly. “I mean, she’s been worried before, but never this much. It’s like she’s expecting one of us to die.”

Sam was quiet for a moment. “It’s a possibility,” he said finally. “She’s been around for over four thousand years, Dean. She’s had to have seen lots of people die in just about every way imaginable.”

Dean shook his head. “No, we’re all going to be fine,” he insisted. “I’m sure she’s just imagining things, Sam.”

Sam studied Dean. “You’re putting up a bunch of bull,” he accused, but it was without heat. Sam couldn’t blame Dean; this was the closest thing to happiness that they had had before Mom died. Sam was pretty sure that Dean felt that sense of completion that Sam did with Erin. Which was kind of weird. Sam _knew_ he loved Erin—the real, “till death do us part” love—and he was pretty sure that Dean felt the same way, and how the heck was that going to work? Dean had always told Sam about his “adventures” in the bedroom, but he had never once mentioned sharing another woman—or guy, because Dean was pretty damn adventurous. Dean didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d go for a threesome.

But, thinking about it, Sam… Well, the idea wasn’t _totally_ repugnant. And the only reason Sam was hesitating this much was because Dean was his _brother_ —and yeah, they might be closer than most other siblings but still— and it would be weird to be in bed with the same woman as his brother…

Dean snapped his fingers in front of Sam’s face, causing the younger Winchester to jump guiltily. “Hey, you okay, man?” Dean asked.

“Huh? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Sam said, smiling. He could tell by the look on Dean’s face, though, that it wasn’t convincing in the least. He’d always been a shit liar when it came to Dean.

“You zoned out there.” Dean paused for a moment, and then asked abruptly. “What do you think of Erin? Like, how do you feel about her?”

Sam eyed Dean warily. “The hell are you on, man?” he asked finally, laughing tensely to hide his sudden case of nerves. “Erin’s like a sister.”

Dean snorted, smacking Sam upside the head. Ignoring Sam’s “Hey!”, Dean continued, “Me? I think… I think I love her.”

Sam felt his stomach sink to somewhere in the vicinity of the Pit. And he would know where that was, too. “Me, too,” he admitted quietly.

There was an awkward silence, and then Dean finally said, “But I don’t feel jealous, hearing you say that. It feels… right. Like the three of us, we belong together.”

Sam sighed and rubbed his temple. “I know the feeling, Dean. I’ve been feeling it almost since day one. We’re going to have to talk to her about this; we don’t even know if she feels the same about one of us,” he pointed out.

“I know,” Dean said, looking at Sam like he was stupid, which was almost enough to make Sam want to grab a pillow and smack that look off of Dean’s face except for the fact that they were actually have a _conversation_ , something which Dean was usually allergic to.

“When?” he asked instead, tilting his head to the side.

Dean shrugged. “Don’t know. Whenever seems good, I guess.”

***

The longer they spent in the town, the more uncomfortable Erin grew, and her conviction that something extremely bad was about to happen only got stronger. A few days after they’d first arrived, she was looking at her reflection in the mirror after having taken a shower when she realized that her pupils were extremely dilated, to the point where there was only a thin ring of iris showing. She sucked in a harsh breath, her eyes widening and staring unseeingly as she thought back over how she’d been feeling since they got in town.

With a sickening swoop of her stomach, she realized that she had felt this way before.

 

“I was right,” Erin announced, emerging from the shower in a tank top and shorts. “This is not going to end well.”

Sam and Dean looked up at the same time, startlement spelled across both of their faces. “How so?” Sam asked cautiously.

“I’ve felt this before, right before Erik died. My body temperature’s rising, my pupils are extremely dilated, and it physically hurts to be apart from you two.” Erin waited for that to sink in, but before Dean could ask the question Erin could see forming in his eyes, she barrelled on. “Erik was my soul mate. I met him in 745AD, he died in 895AD. Right before he died, I went through all the same symptoms I’m experiencing now. Which means,” she said, catching the look of dawning comprehension on the Winchesters’ faces, “that you two—both of you, since you are two halves of one soul—are my soulmate.”

Sam shook his head. “That’s… impossible. What are the odds?”

“After 1,118 years, seven months and fifteen days? Pretty good, actually. Souls can be born twice—the whole ‘second chance’ idea. After that, no one knows what happens to them when they die. But that second chance is when the soul is guaranteed to meet its mate. It’s rare to meet it on the first time, but certain the second.”

“Well, that actually explains… quite a bit,” Dean said, sharing a meaningful glance with Sam. “Sam and I… Well, we figured out that we’re both in love with you.”

Erin grimaced. “Yeah. There’s another thing…” She hesitated, but the heat inside her flared, reminding her that they did not have much time left. “All of these symptoms? They’re basically my body going into heat.” Both men stilled, and Erin couldn’t repress a chuckle at the expressions on their faces. “Yeah, that means what you’re thinking,” she confirmed.

“So…” Sam started, but he faltered, blushing.

“So, that means that my libido is extremely active right now, and it is really hard for me to keep standing here talking to you two,” Erin said, wincing as another wave of heat rolled through her, concentrated in her lower stomach and groin.

Dean looked at Sam, the two brothers communicating in a wordless language that they’d long ago mastered. “Well,” Dean said, standing slowly. Sam shut off the laptop and mirrored his movements as Dean walked towards her slowly. “We can’t leave you to suffer, now can we?”

***

This had to be, without a doubt, one of the oddest situations Dean had ever found himself in. Sam, Erin, and he were all laying on one of the beds in the room, Erin in the middle, Sam on one side, Dean on the other.

Did he mention that none of them were clothed?

Yeah. Definitely the oddest situation he’d ever found himself in.

But it felt so right.

Erin stirred against his side, and Dean shifted to make a more comfortable position for her. The revelation that Erin’s body—she’d told them before that as an Alpha, she could only conceive with her soulmate, and only once even then—had recognized them as its soulmate and gone into heat apparently from their lack of physical relationship prior to this, and their imminent death—not like they hadn’t died before, several times each—was still a bit odd to think about,  but Dean thought that he might be adjusting to it fairly well.

Erin stirred again, then yawned and stretched, a purr rumbling in her chest, which was pressed against Dean’s side. “Mm,” she hummed, nuzzling into his chest.

“Feeling a little left out, here,” Sam grumbled from the other side of Erin, who let out a chuckle.

“You’ll be fine, Sam,” she said, reaching back to pat Sam on the head. She grinned up at Dean, but sobered quickly. “We need to figure out what we’re up against, though, so maybe… Maybe we can avoid… you know,” she finished quietly.

Dean nodded. “Of course.” They quickly got out of bed and dressed, but there was a new intimacy in the air, something that was putting Dean in the odd middle ground of “at ease” and “on guard.” He decided not to analyze it; Erin said that he and Sam didn’t have much time left.

They’d already figured out that it was s skinwalker pack that was in town, killing the people, and they knew where the lair was located, so they stocked up on weapons. But the weapons didn’t help in the ambush. The last thing Dean remembered seeing was Sam falling to the ground, a skinwalker attached to his throat.

Then everything went red, then black.

***

“So… Wait. Sam and Dean died?” Robert asked, staring at me.

I nodded. “Yeah, they did. I guess I always knew they would.”

“And you’re still—“ Arron started, but his voice trailed off as he looked at me uncertainly.

“Immortal? Yes.” I smiled at him reassuringly. “You two are the first Clanmates to be born in several centuries.”

“You said only Betas and Omegas could have children, though,” Rob pointed out. “So how could you have us?”

I laughed. Trust Rob to pick up on some detail like that. “They were my soulmate; Alphas can have children once in their life, and only with their destined mate. I didn’t with Erik, because I believed that I would have him forever. With Sam and Dean, though… I knew that hunt was a suicide mission, and that they wouldn’t come back, either one of them. So, I opened myself to them the night before. I got lucky, and got you two. You each have one of them for a father.”

Arron frowned. “How does that work?”

“You’ve taken biology, right?” When they both nodded, I continued. “When I ‘opened myself,’ I basically induced ovulation. Two eggs were released, instead of the normal one. Each egg was fertilized by different sperm.” I pointed at Rob. “Your father was Dean. And yours—“ I pointed at Arron—“was Sam.”

They both sat there in silence for several minutes. I studied them as they thought over what I’d told them. My two boys, almost all grown up now. Rob was the spitting image of Dean, especially with those green eyes. Arron had gotten my eyes, but he had Sam’s build and hair. They were fraternal twins, but they were more like Sam and Dean than they realized, than I had ever realized.

Finally, Rob spoke. “You said we’re Clanmates. How does that work?”

I debated for a few moments about how much to tell them, but finally decided for the truth. “Once you come of age—anywhere from sixteen to eighteen years old—then your body will decide what other skin to take. Neither of you are Alphas, since you are technically—if you go by DNA—half-Clan. You’re both Betas, so you will be able to pass down the Clanmate gene, if you ever take mates.”

“So we’ll be able to take different forms?”

“No, just the one.” I glanced around the bunker as they digested that information. After the last hunt with Sam and Dean, I’d needed to settle down somewhere. But, I didn’t want to pick some random Small Town, USA, so I’d eventually settled on staying in the bunker, even with all of the memories.

“What about hunting?” Arron asked finally. “You homeschooled us, and we’ve read all of these books. We’re nearly sixteen now. Can’t we help with hunting? You haven’t gone out on a hunt for as long as we’ve known you.”

“No, I haven’t,” I acknowledged. “I haven’t been hunting since that night.” I hestitated for a moment. “Come with me,” I said, standing up and leading the way out of the main library and to the garage, where the Impala still sat, covered, next to my own silver 2006 Charger. I whipped the cover off of Baby and chuckled at the stark appreciation in Rob’s face—he really was his father’s son.

“Meet Baby,” I introduced, gesturing to the Impala. I patted her trunk lovingly. “This old girl carried Sam and Dean through their childhood and their hunts.” I opened the trunk and revealed the false bottom, motioning the twins over.

Their jaws dropped as they eyed the arsenal hidden in the Impala, and I grinned. “Still want to go hunting?” I asked, feeling excitement grow. I hadn’t been hunting in years, but I had trained Rob and Arron to handle weapons as soon as they were old enough to know which way was up. They’d been raised in the bunker, and I’d never hidden the truth of the supernatural world from them. They knew ancient sigils and how to salt and burn a body, and rituals of various purposes from several different cultures.

They glanced at each other, and then at me, wide grins splitting their faces. “Hell yeah,” Rob said. I decided to ignore the language for right now.

“All right then, boys,” I said, grabbing a shotgun and checking the cartridges. “We’ve got work to do.”


End file.
